


A Life More Ordinary

by Rhianne



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Angst, Could read as gen or slash, Gen, M/M, Post-Series, Sad Story, Seriously - this fic doesn't need an AO3 warning but if you want a happy ending, no happy ending, this is not the fic for you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-12
Updated: 2014-07-12
Packaged: 2018-02-08 13:44:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1943382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhianne/pseuds/Rhianne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because life doesn't always turn out the way you think - or hope - it would.</p>
<p>
  <i>Thanks to Arianna and Carodee, who offered their expert advice many, many years ago and have probably forgotten all about it. I didn't adopt all of your suggestions in the end, as this story became something very different in the end, but hearing your thoughts definitely helped me to find my way.</i>
</p>
<p>There are some long, rambling authors’ notes at the end of this fic for anyone who wants them, but in summary - there's nothing triggery in this fic that would need an AO3 warning, but if you're looking for a story with a happy ever after, this is not the fic you're looking for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Life More Ordinary

When Blair imagines leaving Cascade, it’s always a dramatic gesture; sweeping out of the city with Jim’s furious anger ringing in his ears. In his head, he conjures up apocalyptic arguments where they scream at each other for weeks on end, because surely nothing less than the end of the world could ever drive Blair from Jim’s side.

The reality is far more mundane.

By the time he realizes that leaving is truly his only option, the arguments have long died out. Together, they limp on for almost a year after the disaster of Blair’s dissertation, pretending to each other and everyone else that things are back to normal when, in fact, nothing can be further from the truth. 

The press conference was meant to fix everything, but Blair was a fool to ever think something so simple could ever have made things right.

At least no-one can say he didn’t try.

He survives the Academy and the suspicion of his fellow cadets; lives with the regular intrusion of the press who, on slow news days, delve into his past and hound the PD to try and find out why a self-confessed fraud has been given a job in the precinct’s most prestigious and sought-after department. He stands helplessly by as Simon struggles to satisfy the Commissioner, the press and Internal Affairs alike.

He might have lived with the stigma of it forever, if only his friendship with Jim had been spared the fallout.

They no longer fight. The arguments stop the minute Blair falls on his sword on national television. Instead they become unfailingly polite, each going out of their way not to inconvenience the other. It’s the politeness of strangers; both so desperate to hold on to their crumbling friendship that they strangle it with niceties instead, one awkward silence at a time.

Blair blames himself for every line that appears on Jim’s face; for every apology that Jim breaks off mid-sentence as he carries his guilt like a hair shirt.

Conversation between them is superficial. Neither one is willing to risk anything deeper, for fear of opening Pandora’s box and shattering the uneasy truce. 

Then two of their first five arrests as official partners are thrown out of court because of Sandburg’s dubious position as a credible witness. When Jim’s own reputation is called into question – guilt by association has always been enough for the media – Blair finally faces up to what he’s known, deep down, for months.

It’s time to go.

Their final parting is as hard as he expects it to be. Major Crime is sorry to say goodbye, but none of them are stupid. They know as well as he does that they’ve exhausted all other options.

Jim tries to convince him to stay, even offers to reveal the truth about his senses. That touches Blair more than anything else in the hell of the last eighteen months, proving once and for all that, in spite of everything, the foundation to their friendship is still solid. 

He buries that knowledge close to his heart where nothing else can touch it, no matter what the future holds. But Blair can’t ask Jim to sacrifice himself like that; knows the damage it would do to a man who has always guarded his privacy so fiercely. Blair knew what he was doing when he called that press conference, and now it's time for him to live with the life he’s chosen.

The lifeline of the Academy – however temporary – gave him another few months by Jim’s side, and Blair can’t ask for anything more. So he packs what little he wants to take with him and says his goodbyes, dividing some of his belongings among Major Crime and leaving the rest for Jim to sell as recompense for the money he still owes. 

Jim helps him pack, refuses to take back the spare key to the loft and elicits a promise that Blair will call, that he’ll come back and visit. It’s the most civilized break up that Blair has ever known, and he hates every single minute.

Naomi goes back to her travels mere days after Blair accepts his place at the Academy. Wrongly assuming that the damage she caused has been fixed by her son’s self-immolation, she leaves with a clear conscience. 

In the months that pass she stays almost completely out of contact, so Blair has nowhere to send a forwarding address even if he had one to send. As he starts the car and pulls away from Prospect, Blair has no idea when – or if – he’ll ever see her again.

The day he leaves Cascade, heading south, he cuts off all contact with his few remaining friends with the precision of a surgeon’s knife. The list is embarrassingly short and, other than Jim, it’s easier than he thought it would be.

He copes well at first – the whole thing has the surreal feel of a road trip, and he takes refuge in the knowledge that he’s making the right decision even as Jim’s figure on the sidewalk gets smaller in the mirror.

But that first night, as he checks into the first nameless, faceless motel, the doubts creep in. Though Jim has had his senses under control for months and Blair knows he’s been more hindrance than help, he can’t seem to silence the voice whispering in his head. The one telling him this is all wrong, that he should be turning his car around and driving back to Cascade before it’s too late.

He ignores it, determined to see this through no matter what. 

The first thing that Naomi ever taught him was that you can never go back.

 

~*~*~

 

Blair's determination and hard-won independence sustain him for three months, until the harsh realities of living rootless and alone finally prove to be too much. He plans to travel across the country, moving from state to state, working odd jobs to supplement his savings while he gathers his thoughts.

But it seems that his notoriety extends far outside Cascade’s city limits and it’s harder than Blair ever imagined to find work. People are reluctant to trust a self-confessed fraud, even outside academia, and his savings dwindle faster than he expected. People recognize either his face or his name, and even if he’s not immediately identified, it’s never too long before someone asks if he’s _that_ guy.

He always leaves town the following day, and each time he goes is the end of another job, a hotel bill and a fresh tank of gas; another journey with no end in sight. 

Eventually even his natural optimism fades and Blair is left despondent, resigned to what his life has become. The nights are the hardest and Jim is never far from his thoughts. Sometimes when it’s raining, or there is a particular bite in the air that reminds him of Cascade, Blair finds himself sitting by the telephone with seven familiar numbers on the tip of his tongue. 

He aches to call, to hear Jim’s voice again – just for a moment – but pride, shame and the knowledge that Jim will convince him to go back if he realizes how bad things are mean that even when he dials the numbers, he never lets the call connect.

 

~*~*~

 

Another month passes, and Blair is driving through the Pine Forest in rural Maine, miles from anywhere and about as far away from Cascade as it’s possible for him to get without crossing a national border, when the Volvo finally admits defeat. He barely manages to get over to the side of the road before smoke from the dying engine fills the interior, and he is forced out of the car into the driving rain.

Blair waits 20 minutes before trying the engine again, but it’s clear that this time only a miracle could get it going. He tries his cell but of course there’s no reception in the middle of a forest, and Blair isn’t even sure who he would call.

He stays there for an hour, sitting on the drenched dirt at the side of the road, deliberating over his options even though he has none. No other cars drive by. There’s no sign of civilization of any kind, not even an ancient one.

Eventually he is forced to start walking, heading deeper into the forest and praying that the nearest town on the map, Newport, isn’t as far away as it looks.

Two hours later night has fallen, and Blair finally makes it to the edge of the smallest town he has ever seen. He’s exhausted and shivering, but he manages the last few steps to the nearest home and prays that whoever’s inside is feeling charitable.

The door is opened by a wizened old man with dirty overalls and white hair, who takes one look at the bedraggled figure standing on his porch and bursts out laughing. Blair’s temper flares, but desperation keeps him from responding long enough to see that the man’s eyes are kind despite the mirth. The old man mutters something about kids who don’t have the sense they were born with, before disappearing inside for a moment and returning with a thick, warm, grey blanket.

Ten minutes later Blair is firmly deposited over at the local bar under the watchful eye of Mrs Mary Henderson. She wraps him in the blanket to try and stop his shivering, with a large measure of Irish coffee to ward off the chill.

The kind hospitality is almost more than he can bear, and it’s with a weary sigh and damp eyes that he introduces himself as Jake Sandburg. He doesn't want to lie, but he carries the stigma of his given name with every step and can’t bear the thought of being thrown out of yet another town. He has nowhere else to go and, for just a few hours, he wants to be someone else. Someone who can hold his head up and stop looking over his shoulder.

It turns out that the old man, Joe Morton, is a mechanic. He hovers at Blair’s side for a few minutes, still chuckling, before giving him a dressing down worthy of Simon Banks himself for not making sure his car was roadworthy before “headin’ off into the wilderness”. Blair can’t quite bring himself to explain that he doesn’t have the money to spend on himself, let alone the car, but Joe leaves to retrieve the stranded Volvo before he has to try and form the words.

The car is in an even worse state than he’d feared, and what’s left of Blair’s savings won’t cover even half of the repairs. Blair resigns himself to staying in town for a while, until he can find enough paid work to cover the rest of the bill.

His road trip, such as it is, comes to a grinding halt.

 

~*~*~

 

The people in town mostly leave him alone. He’s an outsider – an unknown quantity among folk who have grown up together – and at first Blair is just grateful for the anonymity.

His emotions are too raw for him to deal with strangers, and he’s still hurting enough to be convinced that the whole world must know who he is and what he’s done. He’s treading water, waiting for the next strike to blow apart the remaining threads of his world.

The days pass, seasons change and Armageddon never quite happens. Though he might want to, he can’t just curl up in his tiny, rented room and shut out the world. The rent doesn’t care that he’s drowning – it still has to be paid, he has to eat at least occasionally, and the remnants of his meager savings don’t go far. 

Over time the townspeople thaw out a little, and he gets the odd “good morning” as he walks down the street. Gradually Blair finds some odd jobs here and there. It’s never quite enough, but if he rations out the food and is careful what he buys, he finds that he can just about survive. It isn’t easy, but he’s not exactly starving, and this isn’t the first time he’s got by on so little. 

Most of his student days had been spent watching every penny. It’s almost comforting that he can still do it; that he’s capable of providing for himself when he has to. Living with Jim had made him complacent, and he knows it’s long since time he re-learned how to fend for himself. 

Every now and then, in the evening, Blair visits the town’s only bar. He sits alone, in a corner booth away from prying eyes, and watches life go on around him.

He hears the things they say about him – months spent running from his past mean he’s become good at watching out for himself. No-one in Newport seems to know the truth, but that doesn’t stop them speculating. 

Some think he's just a drifter, others that he's running from someone's jealous husband. It's all just idle gossip, and Blair can never quite smother a smile at the wilder theories. He wonders what they’d be saying about him if he still had long hair. It’s been such a long time since anyone called him a hippie that he almost misses it.

He's able to scrape out a basic living taking on casual manual labor over at the new mall being built a few miles out of town. It's not much, nothing like he was used to in Cascade and he wasn't exactly rich then, but at least it's an honest wage. 

At night he returns to his room too exhausted to think, a few more bills in his pocket and some new calluses on his hands. He turns out the light and stares into the darkness, trying not to think about where he's going to go once he's saved up enough to repair the Volvo, if he ever does.

It would almost be cheaper to sell it for scrap and find something else at this point, but somehow Blair can't quite bring himself to part with the only thing he has left. Every week, he puts a little bit of money to one side for the Volvo – even if it’s just five dollars - as a reminder that this isn’t permanent; that eventually he’ll be back on the road. It’s a small shred of hope that his future holds more than this half-life he’s scraped together. 

Blair feels better knowing that he’s working towards something – that he has a goal, however small. He ignores the knowledge that he has nowhere else to go. 

There’s no-one waiting for him now. 

The Volvo sits in Joe Morton’s front yard, covered by a tarp to keep off the worst of the weather. Every time Blair passes by, a bit more rust has formed on the chassis.

 

~*~*~

 

One summer’s day, four months after he first stumbles into town, Sarah Hawkins disappears. Blair’s seen her around before – a pretty little thing with blond pigtails and red ribbons, and his heart sinks when he hears the news. Crime is practically non-existent in Newport, but Blair’s used to the criminal underbelly of Cascade and automatically assumes the worst. He half expects people to accuse him of taking her – he isn’t one of them, after all – but most of the town is too busy panicking to think of that.

She’s been missing for four hours when he first learns that she’s gone, and half an hour later he offers to help the Sheriff organize a coordinated search of the surrounding forest. The Sheriff is wary at first, but Blair assures him that he has woodland experience, and they’re too low on manpower for the town’s only authority to turn him away.

It’s an almost impossible task; finding a seven-year-old girl somewhere in miles and miles of forest, but the whole town turns out for the search. Once he’s out among the trees, however, Blair’s surprised to realize how much he still remembers from working with Jim, and he ends up leading one of the search teams.

It’s not Blair’s team that find her, in the end, but he’s only half a mile away when the call goes out and he's on the scene shortly after. She’s scared but very much alive, huddled at the bottom of a steep, twenty-foot slope with a broken ankle and shattered glasses. Blair makes his way down to her, slipping and sliding through the autumn leaves, and stays there till the Sheriff arrives.

She’s shivering; terrified of what her mother is going to say and frightened of the growing dark, but Blair wraps her gently in his own coat and tells her stories as the light fades around them, fighting off his own memories of hiking through forests and jungles with Jim at his side. It’s the most connected he’s felt to anyone since he left Cascade.

Laura Hawkins is in tears when she arrives, which sets Sarah off all over again, but eventually mother and daughter are re-united, and Blair climbs wearily back up to level ground. Convincing Laura to let go of her daughter long enough for Doc Owen to check her over properly is difficult, but the second she does Laura flings her arms around Blair, sobbing her thanks into his shirt. 

It’s an awkward moment. Blair is both relieved and embarrassed in equal measure – something that doesn’t abate when people who have barely given him the time of day are suddenly crowding around, congratulating him for keeping her calm and thanking him for caring enough to get involved. Half the townsfolk walk back with him out of the forest, and he gets swept along to the bar with them in a wave of jubilant celebration. 

Being around so many people after months in self-imposed isolation is a little overwhelming, but for all his years of being the observer, Blair has always been a social animal at heart. 

 

~*~*~

 

The next morning he’s woken by a knock at the door. It's a Sunday so the building site is closed, and the events of the previous day have left him weary. He throws on the first clothes he comes across and stumbles to the door to find Joe Morton waiting impatiently outside, dressed in his mechanics’ overalls and already covered in motor oil.

Joe jangles the Volvo keys at him and Blair’s first thought is that Joe is here to tell him to leave, that he’s being thrown out of town again. 

Adrenaline floods through his veins like ice, he can’t breathe, but there’s no fury in Joe’s voice and no malice on his face. He simply hands the keys to Blair, who takes them in stunned autopilot. 

“Come on,” Joe says, jerking his head back over his shoulder. “That car of yours ain’t gonna fix itself.”

The car _can't_ be fixed, at least not with the resources he has. The timing belt needs replacing and the head gasket’s shot, not to mention the water pump has more leaks than the Cascade DA’s office, but Joe already knows that, he was the one to diagnose it’s long list of problems in the first place. 

But when Blair tries to remind him of that, Joe just shouts him down.

“Nothin’ a bit of elbow grease won’t fix,” he says. “Come on, time’s wastin’.”

“But I can’t afford the parts,” Blair replies, ignoring the bite of shame that brings as he can’t quite bring himself to meet the old man’s eyes.

“I’m not as young as I used to be,” Joe says, his voice suddenly gentler than Blair’s ever heard it. “Can’t do the heavy lifting like I used to, and engines ain’t never been forgiving for us old folk. I seen you workin’ at the mall, y’look like you got a strong back. You help me, I dare say we can work somethin’ out.”

Blair drags his gaze up to meet Joe’s, sees the smile in his wrinkled grey eyes and knows what Joe’s really offering. He nods silently, the unexpected kindness after so long making something catch in his throat.

“Besides,” Joe mutters, his voice turned suddenly gruff as he heads back down the path. “You plannin’ to head out over God’s green earth in that thing, seems to me you should know more’n you do about how to keep her on the road. Never did see a classic in such a disgraceful state. Fuse box is so corroded I’m surprised that ain’t gone too…” 

His voice fades away as he walks without looking back, apparently expecting Blair to follow him. Stunned shock keeps Blair still for a few seconds, then he’s grabbing his keys and scrambling to catch up.

 

~*~*~

 

Between Sarah’s rescue and Joe’s obvious goodwill, Newport becomes a very different place for him to live. The townsfolk welcome him with open arms, and he gets warm smiles and claps on the back when they pass him in the street. He becomes a harmless curiosity instead of a potential threat, though that’s not much easier to bear. 

Janey Laurel from the baker’s shop, a buxom lady with greying blond hair and a permanent smile, always slips him an extra sandwich or a pastry when he splashes out a little cash on a bought lunch. It’s a kind gesture, but there’s pity in her eyes when she looks at him; a knowing glance as she – like everyone else – wonders just what it is he’s running from. 

He still works construction at the mall, but now most of his evenings are spent with Joe, tinkering around on the Volvo as well as helping him repair the other cars in the lot. 

Joe has endless patience, albeit buried under a gruff exterior that often reminds Blair of Simon, and slowly Blair learns the difference between a solenoid valve and an OD relay, though it takes longer for him to work out exactly which tool Joe is referring to when he asks for them. 

On cold nights, when the garage is quiet and his shoulders ache from staying hunched over the cars, he sits in the back with Joe and they share a glass of single malt. Joe has lived a dozen lifetimes in his years, and they sit in the semi-darkness as dusk falls and tell tales of years gone by. 

Joe speaks of Vietnam, of courting Katie Morris at the state’s very first drive-in movie theatre; stories of the people he’s loved and lost.

Blair drinks in the words like they’re magic, transporting him away to a gentler world than the one he's known. Joe’s a better storyteller than anyone Blair has ever met. He longs to record the stories for future generations, to stop them being lost to the ravages of time. Whenever Blair’s fingers itch to reach for pen and paper, he pours them both another finger of whisky instead. 

He'll never be that man again.

**Author's Note:**

> _**Where the author’s notes are practically longer than the actual fic…** _
> 
> _When I first started this fic, nearly 10 years ago, this is nothing like the story I thought I was going to write. It's not even the story I thought I was going to finally finish when I looked at it again last month._
> 
> _Originally, this was a story about how Blair moved on after leaving Cascade, found a new home, learned a trade as a car mechanic, put down the roots he'd lost and generally came to terms with what he’d left behind, before Simon found him. He and Jim would eventually reconcile, and together make a new, healthier life together than the one they'd ever had in Cascade._
> 
> _But that plot stalled badly, and it was only when I re-read it years later that I realised why I hadn’t been able to finish it. I love angsty-but-happy-ever-after stories but the happy ending just didn't fit, and something I've learned over the past 10 years is that people don’t always get to live happy ever after._
> 
> _Sometimes things go wrong in life that can't be made better with an apology, and people are left to struggle on and deal with a fallout that will never be resolved, as their lives become something far different then they’d ever imagined._
> 
> _Once I realised that, the end of the story became clear, and I think it flows better for not trying to force a happy reunion. While it's not a particularly happy story now, it feels like a far more 'realistic' one. You could probably still read this and then imagine a sequel where Blair comes to embrace his new life, taking over the town mechanic's business from Old Joe Morton when he dies, but that's not a sequel I'll ever write._
> 
> _Should anyone else want to, of course, please feel free (and send me the link, because I’d love to read it)!_
> 
> _Tonally, this fic is a little different from my normal style. It's styled to add to the sense of Blair's self-imposed isolation, the sense that he's holding himself apart from everything. I like the results, though I could see it coming across as a bit more of a summary than a fully detailed story. In my head, it's all part of the storytelling narrative that Blair has always been immersed in, and which will probably always colour his way of interacting with the world. YMMV, of course._


End file.
